Legally Compliant Business Organisation

Organising environmental protection - Establishing a legally compliant company organisation

A lack of or deficient organisation with regard to the fulfilment of corporate or operator duties can lead to considerable compliance and liability risks. In order to share duties, but also responsibility, the management of a company can delegate management and technical responsibility to responsible persons (delegation of duties). Inadequate delegation of duties may be subject to sanction as organisational culpability (section 130 of the Gesetz über Ordnungswidrigkeiten (Act on Regulatory Offences - OWIG), section 14 of the Strafgesetzbuch (German Criminal Code - StGB)).

The company should therefore instal a corresponding structural organisation (including line and staff functions, matrix organisation) and delegate company environmental obligations. How specifically and to what level a delegation of duties should sensibly be undertaken and in a manner that will stand up in court also depends on the affected environmental media/legal areas, the licensing situation and company size. The scope and number of delegations, however, should be transparent and thus manageable if changes need to be made.

In addition to structural organisation, the establishment of a legally compliant and standard-compliant workflow organisation for environmentally relevant processes is also required for an effective environmental management system, regardless of whether certification to, say, DIN EN ISO 14001 is to take place. We liaise closely with our customers here to ensure that the solutions are viable in the long term and economically feasible.

Our services:

We will be pleased to ask our team of engineers, experts and lawyers to assist your company in setting up a legally certain business organisation. We offer you the following services:

• Individual training courses / workshops on the delegation of duties (legal duties, need for, and sense of, the delegation of duties, presentation of possible implementation channels)
• Working out an adjusted model for implementing the delegation of duties in your company, including the preparation of the relevant, legally examined documentation.

Official Environmental Inspections, Official Monitoring

Preparation for official monitoring of environmentally relevant installations

Companies face official monitoring on a more or less regular basis. The implementation of the European Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) regulates and systematises official monitoring, at least as far as so-called IED installations are concerned. The aim of the Directive is to achieve a uniform level of environmental protection and equivalent competitive conditions in Europe by means of a cross-media, integrated approach to protection. To this end, inspection intervals of between one and three years are defined by the authority as part of a risk assessment.The environmental inspections frequently focus on examining whether operators of installations subject to licensing are meeting their obligations and on whether requirements from ordinances and collateral provisions in respect of licensing decisions are being complied with. It also needs to be borne in mind that the publications of BAT conclusions on the main activity of the installations must be regularly reviewed and that the licence may need to be updated.

The environmental inspections frequently focus on examining whether operators of installations subject to licensing are meeting their obligations and on whether requirements from ordinances and collateral provisions in respect of licensing decisions are being complied with. It also needs to be borne in mind that the publications of BAT conclusions on the main activity of the installations must be regularly reviewed and that the licence may need to be updated.

Previous experience shows that installation operators need to pay special attention to official environmental inspections, not least because the results of the monitoring (inspection reports) are made accessible to the public. The IE inspections essentially focus on the following issues:

• Have the collateral provisions/conditions from the licensing decisions been implemented?
• Is the installation still in its licensed state or have there been changes?
• Are changes to the law being tracked and implemented by the company?
• Have operator duties been delegated and is the company organisation appropriate?

Our services:

• Legal compliance - compliance audits
  We will be pleased to assist you in planning and conducting compliance audits in advance of official environmental inspections and in assessing/ complying with licensing conditions. An experienced and highly competent team of engineers, experts and lawyers is available to you for this purpose. We take company concerns into consideration in this process and focus on proportionate expense.
  
  
• Evaluation of legal sources - CertLex
  Legal source services are utilised on a regular basis in order to track changes to the law. The web-based system CertLex (www.certlex.de) also offers a licensing module in addition to the individual legal source service.
  
  
• To ensure that the installation operates in compliance with the law in relation to the implementation of licensing conditions, we offer you support in setting up and maintaining a register of licences and conditions.
  
  
• Management of conditions and collateral provisions
  The licensing module of CertLex (www.certlex.de) enables electronic management of your entire communications with authorities, such as decisions under immission control legislation, building permits or permits under water legislation. It is easy to carry out the complete documentation of collateral provisions including the delegation of duties, tailored to the configuration of your installations, on an online basis. In this way, you will keep on top of matters at all times, make your employees' work easier and strengthen legal certainty in your company at the same time!

Management of Licences and Conditions

An official licence or notification is usually required whenever a new plant is constructed or an existing one extended or (significantly) altered. This means, on the one hand, that very extensive licence applications, in part, must be prepared for the respective projects, while, on the other hand, a large number of official decisions, with whose individual conditions the operator of an installation must make sure that he complies, are accumulated in the course of the operating period. Keeping track here, knowing which conditions have already been met, which may be obsolete owing to changes in operation or legislation or which are uniquely or recurrently relevant quite often confronts company employees with major challenges.

It is appropriate here to create complete documentation with regard to the licensing decisions (register of licences) as well as conditions and collateral provisions (register of conditions). In addition, responsibilities must be defined and handling of the conditions and collateral provisions monitored.

We will be pleased to assist you in this matter. We will support you in creating a register of licences and conditions and examine, together with you, which conditions have not been met / need to be met on a recurring basis. We will be able to use already existing company tools for this, or we will assist you by means of our CertLex licensing module (www.certlex.de). You will receive a system which allows you to implement all conditions/collateral provisions according to schedule, while ensuring compliance/ constant monitoring.

In cases in which the licensing situation is unclear, it may be appropriate to apply for what is known as a "validation licence". We will coordinate the subject matter of the application for you here in close collaboration with the relevant authority, thereby enabling the licensing documentation to be largely streamlined, while leaving the established rights of the installation / operation as unaffected as possible.

Reporting Obligations

Handling reporting obligations in relation to environmental protection in a timely and legally certain manner

Owing to various national and European specifications, operators of installations now face a large number of recurrent reporting obligations. You are doubtless aware of individual reporting obligations such as the emissions declaration.

The importance of the topic area is underlined by the fact that reporting content may be available to interested parties under the Umwelt-Informationsgesetz (Environment Information Act) or reveal breaches of the law in individual cases. Furthermore, reports that are not submitted in a timely manner may also result in a regulatory offence.

Our services:

BfU AG regularly undertakes advisory activities and the handling of reports. We identify the reporting obligations relevant to you and how to implement them. We will be pleased to assist you in the preparation and timely submission of the respective reports and in conducting a dialogue with the authority.